If you do yoga, any yoga, regularly you might know what I mean by "the pretzel": that guy (or girl) who looks like they came out of the womb doing eagle correctly. Somehow I end up beside them and I end up distracted. Tonight, however, taught me a lesson: even pretzels have bad classes. They can slip on their own sweat and fall out of postures just like the rest of us regular folk. I know I'll probably never be a pretzel—my hips are way tight and my knees have been bad for as long as I can remember (if you hear two cracks like rapid fire gun shots as you get into the 3rd part of awkward, it's probably me). Still, I think that the pretzels are judging me, even though they're probably so focused they wouldn't even know I'm in the room. I've been reading The Happiness Project and I realized about half way through that, like everything else in life, you really can only do yoga for yourself. It's not a competition (although there are yoga competitions), except with yourself. Which is why I'm writing this blog. To keep track of my progress and motivate myself to do better. If it helps someone else, all the better, but my yoga should be about me. It probably seems pretty obvious, but it felt like a breakthrough for me.
Here's how it went:
Injuries: You know how they say "it looks worse than it really is"? That's my ankle right now.
Postures: Got through everything with no dizziness at all!
Notable changes: Nothing too interesting to report.
Favorite pose today: Standing bow. It's a usual favorite, but today I held it a lot longer than I have in a loooong time.
Least favorite: Spine Strengthening again... this time locus and full locus. I was hungry before class so I had 1/2 an all-fruit smoothie (no dairy pre-class, thankyouverymuch) about an hour beforehand... and the extra pressure on my stomach during locus was unpleasant to say the least.
Three days in a row and I was surprised how much I was looking forward to it today. I almost didn't go to the 5pm because of how hungry I was, but I took an informal facebook poll and 2 friends who are both studio owners (one Bikram and one Moksha) both said "Go first, eat after" as opposed to going home, eating first and going to the 7pm instead. Another friend wrote after I was in class, saying "I would go home and eat, and then I would debate about whether or not I was still going to yoga, and then I would not go to yoga. Maybe you can learn from my failures better than I can!" I know myself well enough to know that I would probably have done exactly that, so I'm really glad I just went. And now I'm going to enjoy some well-deserved time on my couch, with a beer, some knitting and some bad tv!
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